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My latest fabric sculpture is an Earth Goddess. She is inspired by the colours and shapes of the ochre quarries of Rousillon, France which I visited several years ago. There is no mining of the ochre now but you can visit an old quarry.

Poly: Earth Goddess – Fabric Sculpture by Nancy Leigh-Smith

I took this doll to the NIADA Conference in Asilomar, Pacific Grove, California, where I had a great time and met some wonderful doll artists.

In order to facilitate packing and transportation I used magnets to join the legs to the torso.

I finished this doll a little while ago. She is a version of the Tea Bags doll you can see here. I didn’t post it as I was busy working on things for the Almonte Fibrefest which was last weekend and Calabogie Artsfest which is coming up on October 15 & 16.

CirclesCloth doll

I named her Circles because her jacket is a circle and because of the pattern in her dress. I didn’t have any lace for the bottom of the dress so instead of making an 80 Km round trip to the nearest store I made some using free-motion embroidery and built-in stitches on my sewing machine on water soluble stabilizer. It took longer than the trip to the store but I’m pleased with the result.

Her clothing contains two different brands of tea bags (three different kinds of tea), parts of old jeans (they once were my favourite pair), a kilt and dental floss. The dental floss was dyed using Bombay Pigmented India Ink and is used for the hair.

The skin was painted with watercolours and the face was done with pastel pencils.

The doll was made in response to a challenge presented by All Dolled Up doll club.

Like this:

All Dolled Up issued a summer challenge to its members: to make a doll inspired by a nursery rhyme. I chose “Little Miss Muffet” as the nursery rhyme, but I did not choose to do Little Miss Muffet as my doll. Instead, I did the spider, Miss Aranea Arachnid, and her lawyer Magnus Pie (a magpie). I wrote a little story to accompany the dolls.

The Case of LIttle Miss Muffet Versus Miss Aranea Arachnid

Miss Aranea Arachnid

Miss Aranea Arachnid is on trial for assault of Miss Muffet which Miss Muffet alleges resulted in her suffering psychological trauma.

Miss Muffet claims that she is too traumatized to testify.

The only witness a M. Goose had this to say

“Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.”

The defence counsel Magnus Pie, Esquire’s summation to the jury was as follows:

Magnus Pie, Esquire

Esteemed members of the jury, I hope that you will put aside your prejudices against the much maligned Arachnid family and judge this case solely on its merits.

This is clearly a case of racial profiling. Miss Aranea Arachnid was simply minding her own business and clearly not engaging in any confrontational or threatening activities when the so-called assault occurred. The scene of the alleged crime – the tuffet – belongs to the defendant, Miss Arachnid and she was in residence when Miss Muffet invaded her territory, clumped herself down, and proceeded to eat her curds and whey. In so doing she narrowly missed murdering my client. Miss Arachnid in fact suffered a concussion when Miss Muffet’s skirts thundered down on top of her. Barely conscious, she crawled out from under Miss Muffet’s petticoats and proceeded towards what she thought was her web. At this point she was seen by Miss Muffet who dropped her curds and whey, narrowly missing bludgeoning my client again and left the scene of the crime.

Aranea, that is, Miss Arachnid, still suffers from headaches, a lingering symptom of her injuries.

The prosecution has not been able to present any evidence that Miss Arachnid displayed any threatening behaviour towards Miss Muffet or anyone else for that matter. Miss Muffet clearly had no business being anywhere near Miss Arachnid’s tuffet and any psychological trauma she may have suffered from this incident is not the fault of my client but due entirely to Miss Muffet’s own actions and to her extreme prejudice against members of my client’s family.

The evidence presented clearly exonerates Miss Aranea Arachnid and I believe that you, venerable members of the jury, after careful consideration of the facts can only find Miss Aranea Arachnid NOT Guilty of all charges.

Like this:

I have been working on a couple of dolls since June. Both started out as prototypes in muslin and then various parts were redone a couple more times because they just didn’t look the way I wanted them to.

M. Pie in progress

This one has all the pieces done, they just have to be sewn together. Then I ‘ll paint the face and do the hair.